Manchester Art Gallery recently acquired an Alexander McQueen’s dress from the legendary Joan collection, Autumn/Winter 1998. It is currently on display in the Unpicking Couture exhibition in gallery 13.
McQueen’s collection is made “legendary” not only by the eccentric personality of the couturier himself but also by the story that surrounds the concept of this fashion line.
The dress is in a Chinese cheongsam-style, with diagonal bodice button opening and side slits to the skirt. It is fully embroidered with transparent sequins on a photographic background.
But, what are the haunting images that served as inspiration for the creator and how is the collection connected to Joan of Arc?
Alexander McQueen, Black silk evening tunic, Autumn/Winter 1998, 2016/27, Manchester Art Gallery.
Information on the web often wrongly identifies this print as a photograph of three of the five Romanov children of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II. The Bolsheviks tragically murdered the entire family in 1918, in the wake of the Russian revolution.
Children of the last Russian Tsar Nicolas II: Olga, Maria, Tatiana, Anastasia, Alexei. 1910, unknown author, photo from open public domain.
However, the blurred image of the children on the dress print is not that of the Romanov children. It would seem that McQueen borrowed the image of three unknown girls and combined it on a Chinese-style dress, along with the tragic story of the murdered Russian Grand Duchesses for dramatic effect on the catwalk.
Are you confused yet? Let’s look at the very idea behind the “Joan” collection from the very beginning…
Struck by a Richard Avedon’s photographs in his visual fable In Memory of the Late Mr and Mrs Comfort (The New Yorker, November 1995), McQueen creates his own collection of “memento mori”. He wants to embody a dialogue of fiery passion and fatal sacrifice.
Richard Avedon, In Memory Of The Late Mr. And Mrs. Comfort, digital prints, The New Yorker, November 1995.
His first creative ideas revolve around the macabre images of the Divine Comedy, and so the stunning Autumn-Winter 1996-7 collection entitled Dante is launched.
The highlight of the programme was the Cheongsam-style dresses. In these, all the infernal darkness of the poet’s idea is realised in the multiple fabric-printed 19th century photographs of a blind beggar colony and photographer Don McCullin’s striking images of the Vietnam war (which McQueen later had to withdraw because he had not sought permission from McCullin for their use). The daring mix of times and styles, reality and fantasy, subtle philosophy and brutal reality is well received by the audience.
Vintage Blind Colony dress from Dante Collection Autumn/Winter 1996. (source)
Alexander McQueen refined his extraordinary vision even further. At London Fashion Week in February 1998, he shows a new collection of 86 looks, dedicated to his 18-year friendship with Annabelle Neilson. It centres on Woman in all her paradoxical strength and fragility. He calls this collection "Joan", suggesting Jeanne d'Arc, but presenting this name in a generic and more English-sounding form.
Alexander McQueen, Joan collection Autumn/Winter 1998, London Fashion week. (source)
The catwalk is flooded with blood-red silks, the clinking of beads, metallic ringlets and armour, interspersed with accents of red tartan, the rustle of sequins and the whisper of vintage photographs. Here, in a dialogue about martyrdom, persecution and eternal power, the very dress that is now in the collection of Manchester Art Gallery was born and shown. The dress repeats the same design of the previous Chinese style from Dante’s 1996 collection. Here, however, he replaces one vintage photo that portrays blind beggars with another that depicts three young, innocent girls. The entire surface of the fabric is embroidered with transparent sequins.
Close up of sequined dress image
Together on the catwalk with the other Joan models in blood-red clothes and masculine reinforcements and surrounded by fire, this particular line with portraits of three little girls formed a paradoxical combination of opposite elements: fire and ice, heat and cold, blazing colour and black and white. The duality of the universe, closed between ancient history and modernity, made very personal and yet universal.
But if everything is clear with Joan of Arc-themed costumes, the dresses of the same collection, with the title Children of the Romanovs, are misleading.
On the one hand, McQueen himself says that the tragic story of the murder of the last Russian princesses moved him and he wanted to immortalise the faces of innocent children with piercing eyes. The black-and-white and silver palette could equate with the coldness of the steel bullets that cut short the lives of the last princesses of the dynasty.
Children of the last Russian Tzar Nicolas II: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia. 1910, unknown author, coloured photo from open public domain.
But the photograph of the three girls has nothing to do with the Romanovs. In fact, it captures three German girls about whom we know nothing, neither their identity nor fate. McQueen copied the image from an 1845 daguerreotype (an early photographic process) by Carl Gustav Oehme, titled Three Little Girls, the original of which is kept in the National Gallery of Canada.
The photograph reveals three solemn looking girls ranging in age from approximately 8 to 12 years old. They wear Western European hairstyles with typically German bobs and fringes on the oblique parting, whilst their casual cotton checked dresses are decorated with fine pleating on the chest. The girls do not appear to resemble one another, and so the inference that there is a family connection is questionable. Since we know nothing of their lives, linking them to McQueen’s stated theme of sacrifice requires a great deal of licence. These girls are neither Joan of Arc nor the Royal victims of the Russian Revolution. This daguerreotype even proceeds the Revolution in Germany that began in March 1848.
Carl Gustav Oehme, Three Little Girls, Berlin, 1845, Daguerreotype, 7.7 x 6.7 cm; The National Gallery of Canada, 1988, № 30655.
Nevertheless, the girls on the dress continue to speak to us. So who are they? Does it really matter? Art often speaks to us in the language of mystery and symbols, so is it important that these are not the Romanov sisters? Does that change McQueen’s message? Or is it the artist’s intent more important?
What do you think?